Laudes Regiae is a work that proposes transversal connections between historic heredity, spiritual journey and socio-political contemporaneity. Developed for the space of the ex Convent of Saints Cosma and Damian, XI century, it consists of 17 frosted blown glass helmets, inspired by a sallet from the XIV century, of images projected using various techniques of the Wolf of Passau, the effigy emblazoned on the swords produced in the Middle Ages and of the audio track of the so-called Laudes Regiae, the Chorus for the Crowning Mass, XI century. Laudes Regiae is the result of the combination of the bare, minimal context of the Hall of the Fireplace and the installative elements. The ambience is illuminated solely by natural light pouring in through the fourteen windows. The light is filtered and diffused by the veils of white cloth, which render the whole exhibition space homogenous, enveloping and hieratic.

Andrea Morucchio’s stimulus and proposal for reflection, thus use a “high”, clean aesthetic, which is intensely evocative, in order to arrive at equally profound rational themes. The title of the installation project, Laudes Regiae, refers to the definition given to a particular genre of liturgical invocation which accompanied the crowning of sovereigns of antiquity and early Christian society. Starting from Christ Victor and King, they served to acclaim in Him his emperors, sovereigns, bishops and popes. In practice, through the repeated mantra, the prayer took on the function of affirming in the popular unconscious, the divine derivation of human power. In his book Laudes Regiae, a study of liturgical acclamations and of the Cult of the Sovereign in the Middle Ages, Ernst Kantorowicz defines them as an acclamation, which sound as the direct affirmation of the power and the glory in which the figure of Christ is that of the militant conqueror.

Laudes Regiae is a work that proposes transversal connections between historic heredity, spiritual journey and socio-political contemporaneity. Developed for the space of the ex Convent of Saints Cosma and Damian, XI century, it consists of 17 frosted blown glass helmets, inspired by a sallet from the XIV century, of images projected using various techniques of the Wolf of Passau, the effigy emblazoned on the swords produced in the Middle Ages and of the audio track of the so-called Laudes Regiae, the Chorus for the Crowning Mass, XI century. Laudes Regiae is the result of the combination of the bare, minimal context of the Hall of the Fireplace and the installative elements. The ambience is illuminated solely by natural light pouring in through the fourteen windows. The light is filtered and diffused by the veils of white cloth, which render the whole exhibition space homogenous, enveloping and hieratic.

Andrea Morucchio’s stimulus and proposal for reflection, thus use a “high”, clean aesthetic, which is intensely evocative, in order to arrive at equally profound rational themes. The title of the installation project, Laudes Regiae, refers to the definition given to a particular genre of liturgical invocation which accompanied the crowning of sovereigns of antiquity and early Christian society. Starting from Christ Victor and King, they served to acclaim in Him his emperors, sovereigns, bishops and popes. In practice, through the repeated mantra, the prayer took on the function of affirming in the popular unconscious, the divine derivation of human power. In his book Laudes Regiae, a study of liturgical acclamations and of the Cult of the Sovereign in the Middle Ages, Ernst Kantorowicz defines them as an acclamation, which sound as the direct affirmation of the power and the glory in which the figure of Christ is that of the militant conqueror.

Through an analysis of the socio-political-communicative valency of the Laudes Regiae, expressions of a kind of medieval - political theology -, surprising elements of continuity from certain aspects of the medieval world to our contemporaneity, become apparent. G. Agamben asserts that modern power is not only “administration”, but also “glory” and the ceremonial, liturgical and acclamatory aspects which we are accustomed to consider as a residue of the past, actually still constitute the basis for Western power. The function of acclamations and glory, in the modern form of public opinion and consensus is still today at the heart of political devices of contemporary democracies.

The innovation of our times is in the function of the media in determining a new and unheard of concentration, multiplication and dissemination of the function of glory as the centre of the political system. That which once was confined to the liturgical and ceremonial spheres is now concentrated in the media and, together, through these, it spreads and penetrates into every moment and every area, public and private, of society. Contemporary democracy is a democracy which is integrally based on glory, that is, on the potency of the acclamation, multiplied and disseminated by the media in the form and according to the strategies of spectacular power.